f13.net

So I've been trawling the freeshards lately, and found one that's interesting.

http://www.ultimaeclipse.com/

* Both Trammel and Felucca rules
* Dueling system, arena combat
* PVP rankings on the website for both general PVP and minigame PVP
* Global chat, private messaging, mail system
* No skill cap, my guy is like 15xGM so far
* Start as 7xGM, ultra-fast skill gains in general
* Ridiculous amounts of gold from mobs, NPC economy trivialized
* Small random chance for artifact drops from almost any monster
* Huge amounts of deco and custom artifacts
* Six houses per account

Basically, they appeared to have gone "Fuck balance, let's just go crazy!" and so far I'm having fun with it. Between the super-fast skill gains and starting as 7xGM, you don't need to macro for a week before doing anything interesting. God knows what sort of insanity comprises PVP with no skill cap, but it's supported.

The huge amounts of gold and small totally random chance for uber drops gives it a strangely Diablo-ish feel. The population is pretty decent for this sort of thing, with 91 people on as of 4AM EST. A bunch of them are doubtless macroing, but a bunch are not. I just had my mule crank out 200 repair deeds for some dude from India.

If anyone reads this and wants to take a peek, I'm on there as Nythrax. Even if you don't get super into it or stay for long, there's very little newbie pain. No farming mongbats and watching your swordsmanship slowly climb. You just pretty much dive right in and get to blowing shit up and collecting artifacts.

Hmmm, if I can get the client to work with Windows 7 64bit I may check this out.  Is there even room for housing?  Did they do anything special with the dungeons?

Even at six houses per account, with all facets active there's plenty of room. Castle spots are all long gone, but throwing down anything else should be trivial. My houses are all pretty small, but they occupy every possible housing spot on their own private island. Well, private except for the lizardmen. But those bushmen shan't inhibit the progress of the glorious nation of Nythraxia.

Dungeons, I dunno. I've only farmed Despise and crawled Shame with a buddy of mine so far, and both were normal except for the loot. I do know they have all the Mondain's Legacy dungeons, which I've never really done, so I'll probably get into those once I'm geared well enough.

If you play, be selective in which 7 skills you start with. Skill gain is SUPER fast. Starting with tactics/anatomy/focus/med/etc. is probably a huge waste of a slot.

Just checking in to mention that this appears to be a reasonably thriving shard, with a steady supply of newbies asking questions in chat. During my house customization kick tonight I stopped like 3 times to hand out GM crafted suits to raw newbs who were asking what they should wear until they get the good stuff.

How's it going on this shard so far?  Still going fairly decent?  I still have UO kicks every once in awhile so this maybe a shard I need to check out to satisfy those kicks.

They delete characters after 30 days, I went outta town, lost interest for a couple weeks after that, and they were gone.

So if you don't play within those 30 days they will wipe your character?  Well I think I can at least refresh that.

LoTRO 4tw.